WOBURN -- The attorney for Theary Chan told a jury that investigators tried to "cover up'' the fact that off-duty Lowell Police Officer Patrick "P.J." Johnson was driving drunk at nearly twice the legal limit when his speeding motorcycle crashed into Theary Chan's Honda at the intersection of Foster Street and Princeton Boulevard, killing Johnson during the early morning hours of Sept. 11, 2010.

In his closing argument Monday, defense attorney Greg Oberhauser told a Middlesex Superior Court jury that Johnson not only registered a .15 blood-alcohol level, nearly twice the legal limit of .08, but the six-year veteran Lowell police officer was riding his Harley-Davidson motorcycle at an "insane speed'' between 75 mph and 80 mph along the boulevard before the collision.

"Yet, the commonwealth wants to blame Theary Chan. Mr. Johnson caused this accident,'' Oberhauser told the jury just before they began deliberations Monday afternoon.

The jury will now decide whether Chan, 28, of Lowell, is guilty of felony motor-vehicle homicide.

But prosecutor Christopher Tarrant argued in his closing that Chan blew through the stop sign at Foster Street and into Johnson's path causing the fatal crash. Tarrant told the jury if Chan hadn't been drunk, registering a .09 blood-alcohol two hours after the crash, he would have heard the loud engine of Johnson's Road King, and stopped at the stop sign on Foster Street realizing another vehicle was coming.

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"Patrick Johnson made his own mistakes,'' Tarrant told the jury, but it was Chan's negligence due to alcohol impairment that triggered the fatal crash.

During the early-morning hours of Sept. 11, 2010, Johnson, 31 of Dracut, had just left a 35th-wedding anniversary party for his in-laws. He had driven there on his Harley-Davidson Road King because he had to wait for the babysitter for his two young children. His wife, Lindsday, left early for the party.

After midnight the couple left the party in separate vehicles. Johnson's last words to his wife were, "You follow me.''

She did follow her husband until he took a right onto Princeton Boulevard and hit the gas.

During testimony on Monday, Marie Sheehan, who worked in the ICU at then Saints Medical Center, testified she was in her 191 Princeton Blvd. apartment at around 12:30 a.m. when she heard a loud motorcycle shifting through its gears.

"I could hear the motorcycle. It was coming fast,'' she testified. "I heard it and then I heard the impact. You knew something really bad happened because there was silence afterward,'' she said.

Sheehan testified she ran outside to see a Honda Accord and a motorcycle in the road, and a woman, who would later be identified as Lindsay Johnson, "crying and screaming.''

Sheehan and her neighbor, a firefighter, found Johnson's body laying face down two hours away -- more than 100 feet -- from the crash scene. Johnson had no pulse and he wasn't breathing. Sheehan said she and the firefighter turned Johnson over and began to administer CPR.

While giving Johnson CPR, he vomited a bile that emitted a strong odor of alcohol, she testified. They continued CPR until emergency personnel and police arrived, then they were abruptly removed from the scene, she testified.

The cover up, Oberhauser told the jury, was that initial police and medical reports indicated Johnson had no alcohol in his system. It wasn't until the state medical examiner issued her report that it became public that Johnson not only alcohol in his system but the amount of alcohol, he said.

The state medical examiner also testified that the impact from the crash fractured Johnson's skull, caused his brain to bleed, broke his ribs and caused other internal injuries. She ruled Johnson died of blunt trauma.

Tarrant flatly dismissed the idea of a cover up.

"Patrick Johnson isn't here to be held responsible for his actions, but we can hold Theary Chan responsible for what he did,'' Tarrant said.

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